Lauretta Vinciarelli, 68

BY ALBERT AMATEAU | Lauretta Vinciarelli, a professor of architecture and painter whose work was in the 2002 Whitney Biennial and other galleries, died Aug. 3 in her Greene St. home at the age of 68.

She fought a long battle with cancer, said her husband, Peter Rowe.

“She was a very special woman and a wonderful painter,” said Beth Gottlieb, a friend of nine years who first met her at the Mercer-Houston dog run where Vinciarelli used to walk her Italian greyhound.

She taught design studio in architecture at Columbia University for 20 years and at City College and Pratt. Her watercolor paintings are in the National Gallery in Washington, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Born near Fiume, near the Croatian border with Italy, she was the daughter of Alberto and Annunsiata Cencioni Vinciarelli. The family moved to Rome where her father was an organist who played in the Vatican and other churches and her mother was a teacher.

Lauretta Vinciarelli studied architecture in La Sapienza, practiced architecture in Rome and came to the U.S. in 1968. She married Peter Rowe, a professor of architecture at Harvard, in 1993.

In addition to her husband, a stepson, Anthony, survives as well as a sister, Donatella, and a brother, Giulio, both of Rome. Greenwich Village Funeral Home was in charge of arrangements. The funeral was Aug. 8 at St. Anthony of Padua Church on Sullivan St.